source – Media Handyhttp://mediahandy.com
Get latest news around at your fingertip...Fri, 16 Feb 2018 22:44:40 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.3Apple to open source its first graphical OS from the Lisahttp://mediahandy.com/apple-to-open-source-its-first-graphical-os-from-the-lisa/
http://mediahandy.com/apple-to-open-source-its-first-graphical-os-from-the-lisa/#respondSat, 30 Dec 2017 14:39:31 +0000http://mediahandy.com/apple-to-open-source-its-first-graphical-os-from-the-lisa/This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Apple had a number of massive hits in the early 80s as the personal computer revolution was picking up steam. However, the Apple Lisa was not one of them. This computer was an undeniable flop, but it’s an important part of technology history. It was one of the first systems to run a graphical user interface (GUI), and included much more advanced hardware than competing systems. You may soon be able to relive the age of Lisa now that the source code has been recovered. Apple is checking over the code and could give the green light to release it in a few months.

The code was recovered thanks to the diligence of the Computer History Museum. The museum’s software curator Al Kossow announced the find on a Lisa mailing list a few days ago. According to Kossow, the code has been handed off to Apple, which is reviewing it in advance of release. Considering the age of the software, there’s not likely to be any sensitive information in there.

It’s not often a computer that performed so poorly in the marketplace has such historic significance, but the Lisa came at an unusual time. Apple was still riding high on the success of the Apple II series, but more competitors were appearing every quarter. Co-founder Steve Jobs was famously excited by the demos of a GUI he saw at Xerox in the late 1970s, and the Lisa was the first machine to leverage that technology. It even had a mouse! Apple spent upward of $ 50 million developing the first Lisa, which hit the market with a starting price of $ 9,995 in 1983. Apple only sold about 100,000 units of the Lisa, but the lessons learned from Lisa led Apple to develop the very successful Macintosh a year later. Despite predating the original Macintosh, the Lisa was significantly more powerful, with support for up to 2MB of RAM (the Mac topped out at 512KB and initially shipped with just 128KB). While the Mac’s CPU is clocked nominally faster, at 7.8MHz instead of 5MHz, the 6800K CPU and video controller can’t simultaneously communicate with system RAM. This reduced the Mac’s overall performance relative to its earlier and vastly more expensive counterpart.

[embedded content]

Even the name “Lisa” comes with a lot of historic baggage. At the time, Apple said the name was an acronym for Local Integrated System Architecture. However, many suspected the name was a reference to Jobs’ first daughter Lisa Nicole Brennan, who he denied fathering for years. In his later years, Jobs admitted the computer was named after his daughter.

Fans of classic computing should keep an eye on the Computer History Museum’s website for the Lisa source code, as well as information about the historic importance of the Lisa. According to Kossow, the only thing included in the code dump that likely won’t make it into the final release is part of the LisaWrite word processor. That application shipped with an embedded version of the American Heritage dictionary for the spell checker. Apple doesn’t own that, so it can’t unilaterally choose to release it.

We’ve previously covered how some router companies are planning to kill their support for open-source firmware updates after June 2. But one company, Linksys, has explicitly stepped forward to guarantee some its devices will remain open source compatible. The June 2 date is from the FCC, which has mandated that router manufacturers prevent third-party firmware loading, in order to ensure that devices cannot be configured to operate in bands that interfere with Doppler weather radar stations.

According to the FCC’s regulations and statements, open source firmware isn’t banned — it just has to be prevented from adjusting frequencies into ranges that conflict with other hardware. The problem is, this is considerably more difficult than just banning open source firmware altogether, which is why some companies have gone the lockdown route. Linksys won’t be retaining firmware compatibility on all its products, but the existing WRT line will remain compatible. Starting on June 2, new routers will store their RF data in a different location from the rest of the data on the router.

The router that started it all

“They’re named WRT… it’s almost our responsibility to the open source community,” Linksys router product manager Vince La Duca told Ars. WRT is a naming convention that dates back more than a decade to 2005’s WRT54G. That router was the first product supported by third-party firmware after Linksys was forced to release the source code for the device under the terms of the General Public License (GPL). This writeup from 2005 examines why third-party firmware became popular for the WRT54G if you feel like taking a walk down memory lane.

That said, we’re definitely seeing open-source firmware support being used as a marketing strategy. Linksys will lock down all devices that aren’t specifically marketed as supporting open-source firmware. If sales of WRT devices spike as a result, other companies will almost certainly invest in creating support of their own. While this would practically fill the niche for open-source compatible devices, it’ll come at the cost of part of what made these devices popular. Until now, projects like DD-WRT or OpenWRT were ways of getting the performance and features of a much more expensive router baked into much cheaper products.

It’s not clear what other manufacturers will do. Making WRT continue to work under the FCC’s guidelines required a three-way collaboration between Marvell, Linksys, and OpenWRT authors, as Ars Technica details. Most companies apparently weren’t prepared to make this kind of transition. It’s not clear when they’ll respond or how enthusiastic they’ll be about making changes to existing products.

Share This article

Last week, the Department of Justice filed its response to Apple’s appeal in the ongoing San Bernardino case. The government is attempting to force Apple to create a method of bypassing the security that would unlock an iPhone 5C that belonged to the shooter, Apple is fighting this demand by arguing against the 1789 All Writs Act that the DOJ has used against it. The Department of Justice’s latest filing ups the ante on this topic by claiming it could compel Apple to give up the source code for iOS itself, so the government could make the appropriate modifications.

The Department of Justice’s latest filing is best classified as vitriolic. It does not hint that Apple has commercial motivations, it accuses the company of manufacturing the entire controversy — and a great deal more besides. The second sentence of the filing reads: “This burden, which is not unreasonable, is the direct result of Apple’s deliberate marketing decision to engineer its products so that the government cannot search them, even with a warrant.”

Apple has taken a strong, pro-user stance on this issue and numerous security experts (and even John Oliver) have weighed in to explain why creating this kind of backdoor for the FBI is dangerous.

The FBI’s brief dismisses all of this as a marketing ploy, and then blasts Apple as a literal threat to American democracy, writing: “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government.”

The source code threat

One of the central arguments around this issue is whether or not providing software to unlock the iPhone 5C in question is overly burdensome. Apple maintains that requiring it to break the security protections it builds into its own devices is a substantial burden, while the FBI maintains that it is not. The government notes that it remains willing to work with Apple to find a way to reduce the burden of breaking into the device, then writes:

“For the reasons discussed above, the FBI cannot itself modify the software on Farook’s iPhone without access to the source code and Apple’s private electronic signature. The government did not seek to compel Apple to turn those over because it believed such a request would be less palatable to Apple. If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple programmers.”

That’s a threat, not a friendly offer, and it underscores an important point in this debate. When Edward Snowden’s leaks revealed the existence of Prism and the cooperation that many US companies had been forced to offer, users were justifiably angry at the idea that companies they trusted with their personal data were providing information in investigations where no warrants had been filed and little oversight existed.

As more information came to light, we learned that several firms, including Yahoo had fought these orders at multiple levels and been defeated. Some of you may also recall what happened to the secure email provider Lavabit, and how the company was forced to shut down. The government paints a picture of corporate cooperation, but what actually happens behind closed doors is anything but friendly. The reason we’re hearing about this case at all is that the FBI chose to make it public, betting that the circumstances of the case and the horrific San Bernardino shooting would help it win the court of public opinion and establish a precedent for forcing companies to break their own encryption. Given the imminent expansion of FBI access to the NSA’s own databases, there’s no sign the government is backing down on its efforts to pull in ever more data.

Is security a selling point?

The DOJ’s brief argues repeatedly that this is nothing but a marketing ploy by Apple, but real life tends to suggest otherwise. Customer surveys show that many people claim to care about security, but repeated security investigations show very few people actually understand it.

The DOJ is arguing that all of this is a ploy to attract customers, but there’s little evidence it is. Apple’s current iPhone 6S marketing page mentions (in order): 3D Touch / Multi-Touch (two sections), the iPhone’s front and back cameras, the A9 SoC, the phone’s physical design, Touch ID security, faster WiFi, and various accessories. There’s nothing related to full device encryption and no sign Apple is seeking to use this as a prominent sales feature.

All of this may be moot in the future; Apple is reportedly working on a device that would be impossible for even it to hack. It’s not at all clear how this would work without compromising other aspects of the device, like the ability to update firmware or repair a malfunctioning device via forced software update.

There’s still a possibility Tom Coughlin could be back on the sidelines with another team.

Nowhere in Tom Coughlin’s 289-word farewell statement did he use the word “retire.” And there may have been a good reason for that.

Because according to one source familiar with Coughlin’s thinking, the 69-year-old head coach might want to coach again.

Only Coughlin knows for sure, but the source cautioned not to rule out anything about Coughlin’s future after he decided to “step down” as coach of the Giants after 12 seasons. Coughlin has often said he had no interest in a traditional retirement and wanted to coach as long as he and his wife, Judy, were healthy.

And as recently as last Thursday, when he was dodging questions about his future, Coughlin said “I always have the competitive spirit (to keep coaching). Sometimes it takes me a day or two to figure it all out when it’s over.”

It’s doubtful that Coughlin would coach just anywhere, though. At 69, it’s hard to see him taking on a rebuilding project like the one he took on with the Giants and their rookie quarterback back in 2004, or to a more extreme extent the one he took on with the expansion Jacksonville Jaguars in 1995. A coach his age likely is looking for a more ready-to-win environment – like an underachieving team with a veteran, franchise quarterback in place.

There aren’t many jobs like that available, though the openings in Miami and San Francisco loosely fit that description. The New Orleans Saints job could have those components if they part ways with Sean Payton. The Indianapolis Colts would seem like an ideal place if, as expected, they let Chuck Pagano go.

Of course there’s no guarantee Coughlin would be a candidate for any of those jobs, despite his stellar resume and his two Super Bowl rings. His age would definitely be a factor. So would his salary demands, coming off a job where he made $ 7 million per year. And it’s possible he would be interested in more control over personnel, given the quality of the roster he’s had to coach the last few years.

Those close to him, though, believes he still has the energy. His son-in-law, and former player, Chris Snee told SiriusXM NFL Radio that Coughlin “has shown no signs of slowing down.”

“I don’t know what he’s going to do but I’m sure he’ll have his phone ringing very shortly and that’s just because he’s a tremendous coach, a tremendous motivator, (and has) such passion for the game that I really admired about him when I was there,” Snee said. “He shows no signs of slowing down whatsoever. He just loves being around the game and the game is better having him in it.

“Like I said I’m sure his phone will be ringing. He loved being the coach of the New York Giants, and the history of the organization being a flagship franchise, having the opportunity to work for the Mara family. I’m sure he’ll need some time to really consider what he wants to do next.”

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service – if this is your content and you’re reading it on someone else’s site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers.